Description: Arguably, many of the fundamental contributing factors to the 2008 mortgage crisis involved misdirected incentives and misinformation available to key participants in the housing finance process. The incentives discussed here include those of the mortgage holders, mortgage intermediaries, mortgage providers, securitizers, raters and CEOs and other highly paid staff of those involved. Unless similar incentives are recognized, future public policy decisions will again fail to avoid this system-wide risk. Since I am most familiar with the U.S. situation, my comments will be limited accordingly.

Description: Climate change is making a significant economic impact into the work that actuaries do. Actuaries working in general insurance have been at the forefront of this work for many years. Now, actuaries in investments, pensions, life and health insurance as well as enterprise risk management are considering the risks of climate change and quantifying the impact of climate change in their modeling. Actuaries can expect to hear of these developments in actuarial circles with speakers representing the Society of Actuaries, the Canadian Institute of Actuaries, the Casualty Actuarial Society, the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (UK) and/or the International Actuarial Association.

Description: The ORSA should be more than a compliance requirement -- its process should be an integral element of a company's governance and risk and strategic planning process used by both management and the board on a regular feedback loop basis. Similar to that used for ERM, it along with a carefully constructed set of metrics should serve as the springboard to be used to identify, control and mitigate short- and long-term risks, as well as to enable exploitation of opportunities to add shareholder and policyholder value. Risk can represent an opportunity from which insurers can leverage their knowledge and risk management capabilities to find and maintain a competitive edge. Part of the essay collection "Risk Metrics for Decision Making and ORSA"